Fans of the reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race would do well to learn about the roots of the drag culture represented by the series, and perhaps the preeminent audiovisual guide to that culture’s development is the documentary Paris is Burning, by Jennie Livingstone. In fact, it comes not from the roots of the culture, but was filmed and released at what many saw as the end of the Golden Age of New York City drag balls, in the late 1980s. Livingstone films some of these drag balls, and interviews members of the black, Latino, gay, and transgender communities of New York City who participate in them.
Livingstone met a group of young gay men in Manhattan while she was a film student at New York University, who introduced her to the drag ball culture. She met the dancer Willi Ninja, who gave her an education in drag competitions and the peculiar phenomenon of “voguing,” of which he offers an extended explanation onscreen in Paris is Burning. Ninja subsequently became an important figure in popular music and dance, and was crucial to introducing voguing to the mainstream culture.
Livingstone also interviews a number of prominent drag queens onscreen, who explain various aspects of drag culture, as well as a few young gay and transgender people, who relay their experiences as queer and vulnerable people in a tough, brutal city. Of particular interest to Livingstone is the young trans woman Venus Xtravaganza, who was a teenager when she was first interviewed by Livingstone.
As a fan of Drag Race, I drew great pleasure from learning the origins of many of RuPaul’s catchphrases and allusions, and enjoyed the explanations to a lot of the slang I’ve been hearing on the show. Voguing in particular has a greater fascination than what Madonna ever let on, and seems to descend from the millennia-long vein of cultural agon between strong artistic personalities, from Aristophanes straight down to Eminem vs Machine Gun Kelly.
For the queens in the movie, drag presents an opportunity to cross over from a place of powerlessness to one of power: gay men dress and pose in hyper-masculine roles (in a category known as “Banjee realness”); men dress as women because they recognise and aspire to a particular elemental power and an aestheticised personal beauty; working-class or unemployed people of colour dress up as rich white people that they see in magazines or coming out of the expensive buildings downtown. These aspects of drag give Livingstone the opportunity to document particular social and political issues, though she merely hints at them. Two of the most pertinent for today are the class discrepancies starkly visible in modern New York City, and the dangers faced by trans people. Venus Xtravaganza’s story takes on tragic dimensions, and other drag queens who decide to have sexual reassignment surgery so that they’re no longer harassed for dressing up as the opposite gender soon find out that women face as much abuse and oppression and in just as many ways as gay men.
The movie would appeal to many viewers today because it depicts the queer and drag subcultures in New York when they were still actual counter-cultures, ones that still subverted mores and expectations, and were still too transgressive for the mainstream culture. However, there is a kind of detachment in the movie, one that viewers today may miss or disregard because of our own disconnect from the culture and times shown in the movie. Livingstone, a white lesbian, conducted the onscreen interviews and documented the drag balls herself, but is not present at all in the film. She has avoided addressing her part in the story or her identity as an outsider to the culture. She may have done this out of deference, but it comes off as evasive. bell hooks, the American author and activist, offers a valid if strident criticism that “much of the film’s focus on pageantry takes the ritual of the black drag ball and makes it spectacle. Ritual is that ceremonial act that carries with it meaning and significance beyond what appears, while spectacle functions primarily as entertaining dramatic display … Hence it is easy for white observers to depict black rituals as spectacle.” Livingstone hasn’t worked cynically or dubiously, and the irony of her presentation is unintentional, but if she had taken a moment to show herself and her place — perhaps a short scene showing the queens giving their consent to being filmed, perhaps an interaction explaining her relationships with Willi Ninja and Venus Xtravaganza — the true meaning of ritual could have been realised, and a show produced with such seriousness could have taken on the significance of a true, transgressive, secular sacrament.
Livingstone met a group of young gay men in Manhattan while she was a film student at New York University, who introduced her to the drag ball culture. She met the dancer Willi Ninja, who gave her an education in drag competitions and the peculiar phenomenon of “voguing,” of which he offers an extended explanation onscreen in Paris is Burning. Ninja subsequently became an important figure in popular music and dance, and was crucial to introducing voguing to the mainstream culture.
Livingstone also interviews a number of prominent drag queens onscreen, who explain various aspects of drag culture, as well as a few young gay and transgender people, who relay their experiences as queer and vulnerable people in a tough, brutal city. Of particular interest to Livingstone is the young trans woman Venus Xtravaganza, who was a teenager when she was first interviewed by Livingstone.
As a fan of Drag Race, I drew great pleasure from learning the origins of many of RuPaul’s catchphrases and allusions, and enjoyed the explanations to a lot of the slang I’ve been hearing on the show. Voguing in particular has a greater fascination than what Madonna ever let on, and seems to descend from the millennia-long vein of cultural agon between strong artistic personalities, from Aristophanes straight down to Eminem vs Machine Gun Kelly.
For the queens in the movie, drag presents an opportunity to cross over from a place of powerlessness to one of power: gay men dress and pose in hyper-masculine roles (in a category known as “Banjee realness”); men dress as women because they recognise and aspire to a particular elemental power and an aestheticised personal beauty; working-class or unemployed people of colour dress up as rich white people that they see in magazines or coming out of the expensive buildings downtown. These aspects of drag give Livingstone the opportunity to document particular social and political issues, though she merely hints at them. Two of the most pertinent for today are the class discrepancies starkly visible in modern New York City, and the dangers faced by trans people. Venus Xtravaganza’s story takes on tragic dimensions, and other drag queens who decide to have sexual reassignment surgery so that they’re no longer harassed for dressing up as the opposite gender soon find out that women face as much abuse and oppression and in just as many ways as gay men.
The movie would appeal to many viewers today because it depicts the queer and drag subcultures in New York when they were still actual counter-cultures, ones that still subverted mores and expectations, and were still too transgressive for the mainstream culture. However, there is a kind of detachment in the movie, one that viewers today may miss or disregard because of our own disconnect from the culture and times shown in the movie. Livingstone, a white lesbian, conducted the onscreen interviews and documented the drag balls herself, but is not present at all in the film. She has avoided addressing her part in the story or her identity as an outsider to the culture. She may have done this out of deference, but it comes off as evasive. bell hooks, the American author and activist, offers a valid if strident criticism that “much of the film’s focus on pageantry takes the ritual of the black drag ball and makes it spectacle. Ritual is that ceremonial act that carries with it meaning and significance beyond what appears, while spectacle functions primarily as entertaining dramatic display … Hence it is easy for white observers to depict black rituals as spectacle.” Livingstone hasn’t worked cynically or dubiously, and the irony of her presentation is unintentional, but if she had taken a moment to show herself and her place — perhaps a short scene showing the queens giving their consent to being filmed, perhaps an interaction explaining her relationships with Willi Ninja and Venus Xtravaganza — the true meaning of ritual could have been realised, and a show produced with such seriousness could have taken on the significance of a true, transgressive, secular sacrament.
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